On Beulah Height

NINE

The half of the woman visible above the reception desk of the Mid-Yorkshire Water company was welcoming and fair, but her implacability towards those seeking entrance to the world behind her hinted the presence of a cry of hell-hounds below.

Pascoe looked easy meat. During the past couple of years, as complaints about drought, pollution and directors’ perks had multiplied, she had become adept at repelling much heavier onslaughts than promised by this slim, pale, dishevelled figure.

‘I’m afraid Mr Purlingstone is unavailable today. If you leave your name, I’ll see he’s told you called.’

‘Just tell him I’m here now. Pascoe’s the name. Pascoe. Just tell him.’

He saw her right hand move and guessed it was on its way to a security button. With a sigh, he produced his warrant.

‘Chief Inspector Pascoe. Tell him.’

She picked up the phone and moments later Pascoe was floating to the top floor in a scented musical lift.

Purlingstone was waiting for him when the door slid open.

‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What’s happened? Why’ve you come?’

‘It’s OK,’ said Pascoe. ‘Nothing to do with Zandra. Really. It’s OK.’

He felt a huge pang of guilt. He wasn’t thinking straight, coming round here like this. Just because the man was dealing with his trauma by fleeing from its centre to the place where he still had power and control didn’t mean he wasn’t in pain. And what else would he think on hearing of Pascoe’s arrival but the worst?

The two men hadn’t spoken since their quarrel, and this, thought Pascoe, is no way to build bridges.

‘Derek,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I should have rung. Everything’s fine at the hospital. They’d be in touch direct if anything was wrong, wouldn’t they?’

This appeal to logic seemed to work, as worry was replaced by suspicion.

‘OK, so what the hell are you doing here?’ demanded Purlingstone.

‘I’m sorry,’ repeated Pascoe. ‘There are just a couple of questions I’d like to ask.’

‘You sound just like a policeman,’ sneered Purlingstone.

It was true, thought Pascoe. His phraseology was straight out of a telly cop show. But so what? We are what we are.

He said, ‘Where did you stop on Sunday?’

‘What?’

‘Rosie said you stopped for a breakfast picnic on your way to the coast. I just wondered which way you went and where …’

He faltered to a halt, not because the other man was looking angry, but because his annoyance was visibly fading and being replaced by a sort of wary pity.

He thinks I’ve cracked, thought Pascoe. He thinks I’ve lost it entirely.

It might have been clever to use this wrong impression as a basis for winning both sympathy and information, but he wasn’t able to go along with that. What he felt about his sick daughter was his business, not communicable to anyone save Ellie, and certainly not usable in this kind of situation to gain an advantage.

He said sharply, ‘Come on. It’s a simple question. Where did you stop to picnic?’

‘On the moor road out of Danby,’ replied Purlingstone. ‘I prefer to go that way to the coast. It’s a bit further, but it misses a hell of a lot of the traffic. Look, what’s all this about? I can’t believe it’s police business … but it is, isn’t it? Jesus Christ, how insensitive can you get, Pascoe?’

No pity now, just anger.

‘No, not really, well, in a way, but …’ Pascoe was stuttering in his effort to offer an explanation and avoid another open quarrel. He saw from Purlingstone’s face that he wasn’t making much headway either way.

‘It’s just that Rosie lost this cross she wore, well, it wasn’t really a cross, one of Ellie’s earrings shaped like a dagger, actually, and one of my DCs found one like it in a waste bin, and I wondered how … It is it, you see … I checked … I mean, it’s probably just coincidence, but …’

A phone had been ringing in a room behind Purlingstone. It stopped and a young woman came out.

‘Derek,’ she said urgently.

‘What?’

‘Sorry, but it’s the hospital. They said, can you get back there straightaway?’

‘Oh, Christ.’

The two men looked desperately at each other, each hoping for a reassurance the other couldn’t give. Pascoe was thinking, they could be ringing home, and I’m not there, and I’ve had my mobile switched off …

He said, ‘Can you give me a lift? Please.’

‘Come on.’

Ignoring the lift, together the two men ran down the stairs.

They could have rung from the car, but didn’t. The pain of ignorance can end. The pain of knowledge is forever. As they entered the waiting room and saw the two women clinging together, they knew it was very bad. On sight of her husband Jill Purlingstone broke loose and rushed to his arms.

‘What’s happened?’ demanded Pascoe, going to Ellie.

‘Exactly what, I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good,’ said Ellie in a low voice.

‘Oh, Christ, and she was doing so well. I should never have left …’

‘It isn’t Rosie,’ hissed Ellie in his ear. ‘She’s doing fine. It’s Zandra.’

For a moment his relief was so strong he could have laughed out loud. Then his gaze went to the other couple, locked in an embrace which looked like an attempt to crush out all feeling, and shame at his joy came rushing in.

‘Should I go and try to find out something?’ he asked Ellie, his voice as low as hers.

‘No. They said they’d let Jill know as soon as there was anything more to tell.’

The door opened. Mrs Curtis the paediatric consultant came in. Ignoring the Pascoes, she went towards the Purlingstones, who broke apart like guilty lovers surprised. Only their hands remained in fingertip contact.

‘Please,’ said the consultant. ‘Shall we sit down?’

‘Oh, God,’ breathed Ellie, for the woman’s voice had the ring of death as sure as any passing bell.

Pascoe took her arm and drew her unresisting body out of the room.

In the corridor she looked up at him pleadingly, as if in hope of finding contradiction in his face. He had none to offer. There was a hush about the wards, and the set look on the faces of two nurses who went quietly by which confirmed what they already felt.

Ellie turned back towards the door, but Pascoe tightened his grip on her.

‘Jill will need me,’ she said fiercely.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re the last people on earth those two will want to see at the moment.’

From inside the waiting room a voice — it could have been either male or female — screamed, ‘Why?’

It was the universal cry of loss; but it contained in it the particular question, Why my child? Why not someone else’s?

Ellie heard it at all its levels and ceased her efforts to pull away.

‘Let’s go in and see Rosie,’ said Pascoe.

They found the attending nurse full of excitement.

‘She opened her eyes just now. I think she’s beginning to wake up,’ she said. ‘I’ve been talking to her, but it’s your voices she’ll be wanting to hear.’

They stood on either side of the bed, leaning over the small still figure of their daughter. Ellie tried to speak, but there were too many conflicting emotions squeezing at her throat.

Pascoe said, ‘Rosie, darling. Come on now. This is Daddy. Time to wake up. It’s time to wake up.’

In the gloomy cave, the nix has made his move. No pursuit round the pool this time; instead he comes running straight across it, splashing through the black waters so that they part on either side like the water in the tank at the fairground when the roller coaster comes hurtling down.

Taken by surprise, Rosie and her companion break apart and take flight, one to the left, one to the right. The air is filled with noise, the animal roar of the nix, the high spiralling squeaks of the bat, the screams of the two little girls — and something else, a voice, her father’s voice, calling Rosie’s name.

Her flight has brought her round the pool to the mouth of the exit tunnel. Here the voice is clearer. She looks up into the brighter light, then looks round to see where the nix is.

He is on the far side of the pool once more. He is standing over the other girl who has stumbled to the ground.

Her hair has fallen over her face so that all Rosie can see are her eyes, which might be Nina’s, or Zandra’s, or some other child’s altogether, peering at her so fearfully, so pleadingly, she hesitates for a moment.

Then her father’s voice again. Come on, Rosie, time to wake up!

And she turns her back on the cave and the pool and the dark world of the nix, and goes running up the tunnel into the light.